Comments on the race of life.

Why we don’t live in London

I don’t live in London because I’m old and my working days are over. I am not earning a living anymore. But even if I had to, I would not live in London. It’s a crazy place – terrifying actually and only to be endured for short visits, if ever.

Mr Furlong and all the Furlong children are country people too. In Africa we lived on a 5 acre smallholding fringed with virgin bush filled with small animals.

Once an eagle picked up our Jack Russell and flew up to take him away. But as it rose, the dog slid out of its claws and dropped to the ground. The vet stitched him up and for a while he looked like a patchwork quilt, but he lived.

Yesterday, the Furlong artist child who popped in to slice her homemade bacon on our meat slicer, reminded me about the Leopards that lived in our bush in Africa. They, cat like, used to sharpen their claws, stretched out like cats do, on trees. Artist Furlong said how scary it was, as a tiny child, to see the clawed bark so high above her head and wonder at how huge and vicious the Leopards must be.

Those of the Furlongs who live in the UK, all live in the country. We are all city averse. We have found that maybe we might earn more if we lived in London but that that it simply wouldn’t pay us. Here, a haircut is 100 times cheaper. There is food to be gathered free off the land if you bother to look for it. Prices for most things are less. Pollution is negligible. People provide good services and products because they know you know their future customers and will tell on them.

Here we have killers and thieves, lairs and cheaters. We call them ferrets and owls, hedgehogs and squirrels.

We don’t need to live in London. We have all the excitement we want, living in the country.